Coffee Trucks Roll Out to Support LinkedIn Today

When is a food truck more than a food truck? When it’s outfitted with iPads, LCD screens, fliers, and free premium coffee to promote LinkedIn Today, which was launched in March by LinkedIn to aggregate the most-shared headlines related to multiple industries.

When is a food truck more than a food truck? When it’s outfitted with iPads, LCD screens, fliers, and free premium coffee to promote LinkedIn Today, which was launched in March by LinkedIn to aggregate the most-shared headlines related to multiple industries.

LinkedIn Today users can sort their news by connections, industry, and the overall network, as well as seeing what their connections are reading. Up to 22 industries can be followed, as can specific news sources.

Crystal Ou from the product-marketing team at LinkedIn detailed the food-truck promotion in a post on the LinkedIn Blog:

We wanted to take our digital brand offline in a fun way that would allow users to get their hands on new products like LinkedIn Today.

With the food-truck trend all the rage, we decided to custom-wrap two food trucks where people could demo LinkedIn Today while sipping locally brewed premium coffee — Martha & Bros. in San Francisco and Brooklyn Roasting Co. in New York.

What started life as a cupcake truck transformed into a mobile news café after a crew wrapped and outfitted them with iPads, an LCD screen, and slots for fliers. The trucks roamed the streets of Manhattan and San Francisco during the week of March 28 to introduce LinkedIn Today and give out free coffee to busy professionals. Our users tracked down the trucks’ real-time locations by following LinkedIn Today’s live stream, and we responded to users’ requests on where they’d like the trucks to go next. Our team of volunteers, including many of my colleagues, chatted with passers-by as they tried LinkedIn Today on iPads, their phones, and laptops.